Keepin' hogs

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The 4-H club movement grew out of pig clubs that flourished at the turn of the century. That was when the members realized the truth of the saying, 'Son John had a little pig, when it was very small, but when it grew up and became a hog, it wasn't John's at all.' More crudely put, it was 'Johnnie's pig, but Daddy's hog.'

The 4-H members learned responsibility, recordkeeping and the joys of ownership by caring for pigs. They also suffered heart-breaking reality when little 'Ambrose' grew up and was sold at the 4-H auction to the local banker, who turned it over to the local IGA, whose butchers sold its chilled and naked body parts for premium prices. Money doesn't fill that void.

Wild hogs? Oh, yes. Herds of several dozen roamed the thickets along Muddy Creek and made the gulleys, ravines and hidden thickets their habitat on old Red Hill. I can well remember the old timers braggin' about the wild boars they had captured on the slopes. In fact, a giant 7-inch boar tusk lay around the shop for years. Dad claimed it came from an animal that had eluded hunters for years along Paul's Creek, but hunting wild boar eventually gave way to chasing fox.

When fall came around, it was time to pen up the half dozen or so butchering hogs and put them on a skim milk, tankage and ear corn diet. Then, come a good cold snap, it was butchering time and that meant fresh sausage, back bones with sauerkraut, pickled pig's feet, head cheese and corn meal mush fried in fresh sidemeat drippings. U-m-m-m-m-m. FC

- The late Perry Piper was a newspaper columnist in Indiana and Illinois for more than 12 years. His columns, reprinted here from his memoirs, appear in Farm Collector with the permission of his family.

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